Rabbit, Run
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15
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John Updike's Rabbit, Run is a classic story of dissatisfaction and restlessness. Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom was a star basketball player in high school. Now twenty-six, his life seems full of traps, the biggest being his pregnant wife and two-year-old son. He sets out to escape, but it's not clear if Rabbit is really following his heart or only chasing his tail. Powerfully written, Rabbit, Run gave American literature one of its most enduring characters.
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This has to be subtitled “Portrait of a Scumbag as a Young Man” or something like that, right? I cannot remember a protagonist I despised more than Harry Angstrom. And I guess that was the point, but it'd have been nice if we'd been given at least one character worth spending time with.
Updike is clearly attacking/critiquing several things there...love, God, the Chuch, family, marriage. I don't know, everything? Almost everything, anyway. He clearly likes the sound of his own voice (and female anatomy), but that's the only thing I can think of.
Miserable book filled with miserable people and I can't see why anyone would bother to read this in the first place, much less elevate it to the status it has in contemporary lit. The worst of it all is that I'm going to have to read more, just to see if I can understand what it is about this loser that inspired four sequels.
